


Watercolours

by ayatsujik



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-01 23:28:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1049845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ayatsujik/pseuds/ayatsujik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He comes to understand that Makoto is the land to his sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watercolours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shieru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shieru/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Dead Reckoning](https://archiveofourown.org/works/899345) by [furiosity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/furiosity/pseuds/furiosity). 



> 1\. As mentioned above, inspired by and an homage to "Dead Reckoning", furiosity's amazing fic. Even if I already feel I should apologise for this, ehe. Regardless, DR is quite possibly the loveliest, longest, and best-paced HaruMakoHaru getting-together story that will ever be written in English, so you really need to go read that if you haven't already. The final segment here references the first and second chapters of DR, so it'll make more sense in that context.
> 
> 2\. In the anime Haru's parents have left him to live alone following the death of his grandmother - his mother has gone to accompany his father who is working away from their town. I'm assuming this didn't happen till Haru was in middle school at least. Haru's also older than Makoto by almost five months. 
> 
> 3\. For my one and only K. I may never learn to write stories that transcend mashed-up pastiches of impressionistically fluffy vignettes which are mostly me writing out loud to myself, but that (unlike this particular fic) isn't your fault. 
> 
> 4\. When series makers do the colour-coding of characters thing...the obvious response as a good fan is to run with it. No excuses for any WTF you encounter here. 
> 
> 5\. Happy belated birthday Mako-chan! Didn't make 11/17 on Japan time, alas, but nonetheless.

There's a way in which he sees Makoto as green.

More precisely, a palette of greens, shifting with Makoto's mood and the occasion. On mornings, for instance, he tends to be a yellow-green like young leaves under the early sun. Fuzzy around the edges with remnants of sleep. On their walk to school a yawn or two escapes, seconds before his hand makes it to his mouth.

Before club practices he usually gets brighter and deeper; a summer-grass green. It tints his strokes in the pool, the instructions he issues to the first- and second-years they've acquired after a couple more successful tournaments. The patient injunctions to Nagisa and Rei to focus on training and helping the lowerclassmen instead of playfighting.

At the end of the day he darkens to a green tinged with blue, the teal of sea under clouded sky. Haru, out of the corner of his eye, watches it flicker in the way Makoto stretches his arms out behind his head, how his gait is a little longer and slower; in the way he asks, so many evenings of the month, _do you want to come over for dinner?_

Makoto is a presence Haru doesn't know he's assumed would always be there. Until that one night when he dragged Makoto out of the clutches of storm-tossed waters, suppressing his own fears until they had reached land again, only to be paralysed by the most terrifying /what-if/ that had ever assailed him in all sixteen years of existence. Panicking, mind a searing white blank before he finally got into position to do mouth-to-mouth. And even then, though Makoto's life might have been on the line, hesitating for a moment because - because -

"Haru?"

He surfaces to the present, and to Makoto's questioning, mildly concerned face opposite him. They're sitting at a table in the school library - a corner one in the back, because Haru doesn't like being in the middle of the main study area surrounded by other students who are mostly texting, covertly holding hands under tables, or snore-drooling onto notes and textbooks.

"Are you tired? Let's go back, if so."

He shakes his head slightly: _I'm fine_.

Makoto smiles the smile that was just in his mind; the one that says _as long as you're okay_ , and takes up his stack of English vocabulary notecards again. A gentle expanse of green before him. Haru blinks down at his own textbook, but it takes some time for the symbols and sentences on the page to make sense.

Haru thinks it's funny how some things without words are so much easier to understand.

**

He learns early on that words can be more slippery than fish and even harder to catch. He gets used to lingering a few steps behind, to keeping thoughts in place and watching over them. It's easier to say nothing than to express things he isn't always sure will come out the way he wants them to. As a child it sometimes overwhelms him, how /much/ of everything and everyone can be, loud voices and flares of tempers and tensions that muddy the air. No one's told him anything directly, yet, but he's figured out that his father might have to leave Iwatobi to work somewhere in Tokyo, even if neither he nor his mother really wants that to happen. 

Haru doesn't want to leave. Tokyo's a lot further away from the sea, and who knows if they have swim clubs there or not. But adults can be less than ideal in their responses if he shows he's upset. Crying might bring a storm of anxious fussing; going into the corner and putting his hands over his ears might earn him a spank for being rude, when really, all he wants is for them - for whatever it is - to stop, to be quiet, to let him go and immerse himself in a body of water that will block out the noise and lap soothingly over his back.

But at times like these his grandmother draws him to her side, murmuring wordless comfort. Sitting on the veranda of their Japanese-style house, she beckons him over to her lap for a session of long, firm pats on his head, like he's one of the neighbourhood cats. Slips him a candy or two when his mother's head is turned.

And Makoto, on discerning Haru's distress, always gives him both halves of the ice pop.

On a warm afternoon in late fall, soon after Makoto's also turned nine, he makes his way to the Tachibana household following an Incident involving his mother's fish tank. Makoto drags out a couple of floatboards and the inflatable kiddy pool his parents bought him as a birthday present; between the two of them, with some friendly assistance from Makoto's father, they manage to pump it up and fill it with the garden hose.

They sit and float in companionable quiet, picking out the reddish-orange momiji leaves that flutter down into the water from the nearby trees, until Makoto's mother comes out (her belly swollen with what Makoto's told him is not one, but /two/ babies) and calls them in to dinner.

Makoto's good at letting things take their course. It's a relief, and it makes him easy to be around. Makoto doesn't think it's weird that his parents eventually leave their town and don't take him with them. Makoto doesn't ask him to talk about Rin, after that ill-fated match in middle school. Makoto stops trying to persuade him not to quit the swim team a lot sooner than everyone else does.

Makoto only makes himself into a warm, hovering shadow at Haru's side, and Haru eventually stops being surprised whenever he comes up from the water in his mind - a space he retreats to when the mood strikes him, which is often - and finds him there. A tree whose verdant shade keeps the sun's glare at bay. 

**

In the first term of their fourth year of elementary school they get an assignment for Japanese class that involves making a presentation about what the kanji in the name of a classmate means. Makoto and him are in the same homeroom, that year, and their decision to collaborate is as inevitable as the swimming practice they head to after their schoolday ends.

Haru's fine with school, on the whole. There aren't many people who talk to him, but then again he isn't looking for anyone in particular to talk to. Makoto and Nagisa are enough (in fact, Nagisa alone can be more than enough). Haru doesn't especially like or dislike his lessons. Some things make more sense to him than others, and he's secure in the knowledge that the pool will be there after he exits the classroom. But this assignment actually stirs a spark of interest in him. Kanji are fun - more enjoyable than grammar, at least. Memorising them can get annoying, but he rather enjoys writing characters, watching the small lines and curves intersect to make a picture with meaning.

In any case, this concerns Makoto, so at least it's important. 

The next time they're both over at Haru's to do homework, he takes the simple expedient of asking Makoto what his name means. It turns out Makoto doesn't know either. So they go and ask Haru's grandmother, who proceeds to take out a dictionary and make them use it. With some prodding assistance on her part, they eventually arrive at the following explanations:

 _Tachibana_ (kitsu): The name of a tree. A variety of citrus fruit.  
 _Ma_ (shin): Truth. Sincerity.  
 _Koto_ (kin): A stringed instrument of Chinese origin.

What's "citrus," Makoto wants to know. Grandma Nanase explains that it means fruits which are like mandarin oranges, yuzu or sudachi - orange-green-yellow in hue, with peelable skin and sour-sweet juice. She adds, with a pat on Makoto's head, that "Tachibana" is also the name of one of the four great families of the ancient Japanese imperial court, and that Mako-kun should be proud of carrying that blood in his veins.

Haru approves: sudachi is excellent squeezed over grilled mackerel, so it follows that a fruit like it would also go well with the tastiest fish in the world. And an imperial court sounds cool, since it was the probably the kind of place with a pool of its own. 

His grandmother appears amused, if vaguely resigned, when he offers these thoughts. Makoto smiles, big and bright and yet somehow shy.

"Now we have to look up your name too, Haru-chan."

"Stop calling me -chan," Haru says on reflex, and his grandmother chuckles.

He's never thought about Makoto's name before. It feels good, and it fits his friend. Like a well-made pair of swim trunks.

That night, tucked into bed, he traces the characters for Makoto's name in the air with his finger, one by one, over and over again, before sinking into sleep.

**

He observes Makoto as much as Makoto watches him.

Most people don't realise this. But then there aren't many people who look at Haru, especially when he's not swimming. His other childhood friends deal much more in the business of drawing people's eyes to them. Especially Rin, who's flashy in and out of the pool, glinting flame-red in the canines that peep out of his smile, his direct gaze, his loud, open laughter. Nagisa is the gold of late afternoon sunlight, sometimes too bright to take full-on; a frenzy of chatter and attack hugs darting about like the black-and-yellow dragonflies that converge on the rivers in summer.

Makoto, in his various shades of greens, isn't particularly eye-catching, but he tends to keep the attention of those who turn it to him.

They make it to the other side of puberty with the longer limbs, larger frames and lower voices their biology texts promised. What their books don't discuss is how this makes girls react. In the third year of middle school, one of them comes to their classroom during break and asks for Makoto, her voice lowered, the blush on her face obvious. Haru notes the catcalls that accompany Makoto as he awkwardly goes out to meet her. The glance he shoots at Haru, just before doing so. He pretends not to notice. Until Makoto re-enters with a small pink envelope in his hand and sheepishness written all over his face. The other boys applaud - _she's a first-year, you bastard, Tachibana!_ ; the girls whisper amongst each other about the giver's identity - _I think she's in my younger sister's class! Rina-chan, isn't she in the choir with you? Tachibana-kun's getting popular..._

He doesn't move until he hears Makoto's voice calling him, softly.

"Haru? Haru. It's time to move, next period is science lab."

He blinks, then, and looks up at the smile he knows like the back of his hand. The pink envelope, unopened, lies on Makoto's desk like an afterthought. It's sealed with a small white sticker in the shape of a heart. Makoto fishes his notebook and pencil case out of his bag and stuffs the letter into a side pocket.

"You're not...going to open it?" he asks, slowly and carefully, each word a heavy piece of glass.

"Ah, there's no rush." Makoto laughs, rubbing the back of his head. "Besides...I think I know what it's going to say, anyway." He sounds vaguely apologetic; reluctant, even. It occurs to Haru to wonder why he isn't acting more like other boys he's seen get confessed to.

He decides against asking. Something feels off about Makoto getting something boys their age are supposed to want, somehow. Like a clogged tub, or a leaky faucet. Haru continues to have this sense the next couple of times the same thing happens - again in their last year of middle school, and during their first year at Iwatobi High.

Makoto never seems especially happy about any of this, and he never starts dating any of the letter-writers and chocolate-givers. Haru continues not to ask why. At these times he finds Makoto the green of a weed-covered pond, uninviting in its lack of clarity. Better, he thinks, not to stir things up.

It doesn't matter. Not as long as Makoto returns to his usual self.

("Haru-chan," Nagisa later chides, "Girls think you're also cute, but they're just scared to tell you. Smile! Smile on the outside!")

**

Nothing about Makoto's swimming is perfect, though his form is good, his height translates into longer strokes, and he's put on enough muscle to be powerful. But there's a rough grace to his movements that Haru finds pleasing. In the pool, at least, his friend is at home enough that the water accepts him, working with his movements instead of against them. The same way it does for Nagisa, although it still presents some resistance to Rei. 

In the pool Makoto sometimes appears as a streak of green moving through blue, the colours blending into each other over laps. He likes the way Makoto lances the water with his back in a taut arc, his eyes closed right before opening them for the first strokes.

Haru finds it beautiful; more so than the focused form of Rin's technique, even. He doesn't think of telling Makoto this. It's one of several personal truths he isn't inclined to share with Makoto, because he isn't sure which one of them would be more mortified.

Part of Haru senses, with an instinct honed by years of acquaintance, that Makoto has truths of his own he isn't sharing with him, either.

Sometimes he catches Makoto looking at him with a question in his eyes that never makes it into words. It puts a funny feeling somewhere in Haru's gut, similar to what he'd felt at the time of the regional tournament, in the first year of the Iwatobi swim club. After he'd lost to Rin, and returned after a long, private swim to find Makoto asleep in the entrance to his house. Haru's cellphone held loosely in his hand, still in the team uniform and shirt he'd worn that morning. Waiting for Haru to come home.  

Then there's the odd occasion when Makoto says things that come out of nowhere. On a spring evening in their third year of high school, for instance. They're on the veranda of Haru's house after a joint study session, accompanied by chips and soft drinks. To the west the sky is flushed orange and pink. In the distance, a couple of cats are yowling. There's a lull in Makoto's idle talk about the upcoming exams; in Haru's brief nods and sounds of simple response.

"Sometimes," Makoto says, very quietly, breaking into Haru's lazy drift across his mental waters, "I feel you could swim forever, because water doesn't end. And you'd just keep on swimming and swimming...and then I'd never see you again."

It's a long remark, for Makoto, and shot through with melancholy. Haru doesn't really know how to respond, but he's got the sense that he should try. Especially when Makoto's face looks like he's let go of something he didn't mean to and is now regretting it. Lips pursed, brows furrowed.

Makoto starts to apologise, and Haru manages, "I get tired too, so I have to stop, eventually."

"...Haru-chan," Makoto says, the smile in his voice as well as on his face.

Haru thinks of complaining about the suffix, and doesn't.

**

He thinks a lot about the past, in the six weeks that Makoto and him are away from each other. About the future stretching out of sight into a horizon of uncertainty, which their teachers have been harping on for the last few months. Until it finally dawns on him what he really wants; what he never wants to stop having. What the half-buried realisation that's been surfacing for years is, in all its turbulent glory. Separation brings clarity and a lens to things Haru's been fine leaving off-focus before. It drives him to runs, to ever-longer bathtub soaks, and even more frequent bouts of diving into convenient bodies of water that beckon him to their cool, accepting depths. 

(Six weeks, with each day an eternity.)

It's not that he's upset, precisely. It's an unreasonable mixture of feelings crashing into one another. Resentment at Makoto for leaving for so long and so far away, thereby precipitating these inconvenient emotions, all still raw and tender. Consternation bordering on despair at the thought that Tokyo might actually steal him, not just for university, but for good - Iwatobi never had such large, glittering festival processions, just for starters, and who knew if Makoto was secretly yearning for the excitement of the city, like so many other of their schoolmates? Annoyance at himself for not trying to do or say something earlier. He can't shake the sense that he should have tried to let Makoto know. Somehow. Anyhow. 

Makoto never pushes. Makoto's always watching, waiting, giving in. Giving up.

Haru doesn't want to be given up on; doesn't want to stop being watched, or being waited for. But it's hard to think about being Makoto's closest friend. It's not a position he plans on relinquishing, but which might be made precarious if Makoto doesn't want anything more than that. He's reminded of the period he spent wrestling over the question of whether or not to swim competitively again.

Except this is far, far worse. Frightening, even.

(Haru's never admitted it to himself before, but it /is/.)

So when he sees Makoto step off the train - tall and gentle as ever, smile undimmed by distance and metropolitan chaos - a wave of truth breaks over him, leaving light-headedness and intense, unspeakable relief in its wake.

(Later he will put images to the feeling: Makoto is the land to his sea, a shoreline for his self. Somewhere to be outside of the water.)

But not yet. Makoto’s face, then, is just sweet and painful all at once, and ignites an explosion of butterflies in his tummy. When Makoto calls out to him, he doesn't respond. He can't. The butterflies surge, and he keeps on walking, almost dizzy.

(This dizziness condenses; threatens to drag him into its undertow, the first time he feels the cool dryness of Makoto's lips under his own. The first time he hears Makoto say his full name.)

Haru isn't attached to many things outside of swim gear and mackerel. But this person is important and precious beyond belief. The light roll of his voice; the gold streaks the summer sun paints into his hair; the small chuckles that escape him when playing with the neighbourhood cats. The height Haru never reached, and the largeness of his hands. The vulnerability that clouds his eyes over fears, trivial or otherwise; a haunted house, or a procession of white-hooded mourners.

There isn't anyone else Haru wants to protect as much. To accompany. To just be with.

(/His/ Makoto.)

The night of their first kiss, staying over at the Tachibana house, he manages to fall asleep once, but wakes soon after. His futon is right beside and too far from Makoto's bed. He turns over and looks up at Makoto's face in sleep, soft and relaxed. Feels the butterflies return.

Too far, Haru thinks again, and gets to his feet.

Makoto's skin smells of pine soap, the kind his family brings on camping trips with them, and he's a lot warmer than Haru's blanket. Haru turns so his back is against Makoto's chest, feeling the rise and fall of his breaths. Closes his eyes, drifting into the embrace of a sea of endless green.


End file.
